I was born in Homer, New York on November 7, 1832. I learned to read by age four in an unusual way.
The colored servant who had charge of me wished to learn to read--so she slipped into the school and took me with her.
I clearly recall arithmetic and geography at school and at home, and playing with other children in the woods and streams and on the village green in Homer. I remember when I and other children stormed or defended snow forts or shot arrows on the village green for entertainment.
If any old settler happened to pass during our snow-balling or shooting with bows and arrows, he was sure to look on with interest, and, at some good shot, to cry out,--Shoot Burgoyne!--thus recalling his remembrances of the sharpshooters who brought about the great surrender at Saratoga.
In the early years of the century, my paternal grandfather was the richest man in the township. Tragically, sometime before my birth he had become one of the poorest. A fire consumed his mills, there was no life insurance, and his health gave way. This calamity took my father out of school. He met the emergency with courage and determination, and was soon known far and wide for his energy, ability, integrity and business acumen. Long before he had reached middle age, he was considered one of the leading men of business in the county.
My mother had a more serene career....Her father prospered as a man of business, was known as Colonel and also as Squire, and represented his county in the State Legislature. He died when I was about three years old....On one account, above all others, I have looked back to him with pride. For the first public care of the settlers had been a church, and the second a school. This school had been speedily developed into Cortland Academy, which soon became famous throughout that region, and, as a boy or five or six of age, I was very proud to read on the cornerstone of the academy building my grandfather's name among those of the original founders.
My family moved to Syracuse when I was seven years old. My father opened a new bank in Syracuse. I studied at private and public schools, and graduated from academy at age seventeen.
My family was Episcopalian, so my father sent me to Geneva College [Hobart and Smith College] in Geneva, New York. One year later I dropped out. I pleaded with my father to send me to Yale. After a temporary estrangement between us, my father acquiesced to my request for a better school and I was soon a student at Yale.
I attended Yale from 1849 to 1853. As a junior I won the Yale literary prize for best essay, beating seniors who usually got the award. I won the Clark prize for English disputation and the DeForest prize for public oratory. On 'Tap Day' I joined Skull and Bones, an undergraduate senior secret society at Yale.
After graduation, along with classmate Daniel Gilman, I traveled and studied in Europe. I attended the Sorbonne, the College de France and the University of Berlin. I then served as translator for U. S. Ambassador Thomas Seymour in Russia. When I returned to the United States, I re-enrolled at Yale and obtained an M.A. in history and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 1856.
In 1858 I joined the faculty at Michigan University as professor of history and English literature. I remained at Michigan U. until 1863, when I again traveled to Europe. The United States was engaged in a civil war and I lobbied France and England not to aid the Confederacy against the United States. I returned to Syracuse, New York for business and political interests that same year, and I was elected to the New York State Senate on the Union Party ticket.
In the New York State Senate I met Ezra Cornell, a farmer from Ithaca, New York, who had made a substantial fortune in the telegraph industry. Together we supported a land grant for a new university in New York State. In 1865, I introduced a bill to establish Cornell University on land owned by Senator Cornell in Ithaca. On April 27, 1865, the bill became law and Cornell University was fully endowed. I became the university's first president, also serving as professor of history.
During my tenure at Cornell, my interests in the diplomatic field never waned. I served under President Grant on the Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, and as Ambassador to Germany (1879-1881). I resigned as Cornell's president in 1885. Later I served as Minister to Russia (1892-1894), as president of the American delegation to the Hague Peace Conference in 1889, and again as Ambassador to Germany (1897-1902).
I was author of History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). At Cornell's founding, I announced that Cornell would be an asylum for science--where truth shall be sought for truth's sake, not stretched or cut exactly to fit Revealed Religion.
I completed my autobiography in 1904, and it was published in 1904 and 1905. I donated more than $500,000 to Cornell University, and 4,000 books for the study of architecture.
Following a long period of illness, I had a sudden stroke on October 26, 1918. I died at my home in Ithaca on November 4, 1918. My body was interred at Sage Chapel at the University of Cornell.
My name is Andrew Dixon White.
References:
1) Quotes, in italics, from Autobiography of Andrew Dixon White, published 1905, The Century Company. Free e-book download at Google books.
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Dixon_White
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